The Piano
by logarhythm
Summary: One-shot: Who knew he could make an old, out of tune piano sound so damn beautiful? /RoyEd if you really, really squint./


**Sorry for being inactive lately ^_^; Had quite a 'down' period, but I'm back! ... With a one-shot. /shot/ (No pun intended)**

**Anyway, I'm halfway through the next chapter for _Ward 17_, _TATMWITC _AND _A Song For Myself_. So be patient and wait a little longer, ne? ^_^;**

**I had a sudden strike of inspiration when I was listening to Ludovico Einaudi, and I couldn't stop myself from writing this... Sorry.**

**Disclaimer~**

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><p><strong>. :the piano: .<strong>

His hands stroked the keys, each finger caressing the yellowed ivory as it flew across the piano, grace and heaven dripping from each touch. Oceans of notes swathed the room in soft blankets of thorns and roses, swaddling each single occupant of the dark room with a mother's love and hushing their awed gasps. The trills soared into the stale air, blowing the musty scent of memories around the ordinarily dreary room; the seventeen could feel each thought, see each emotion dredged up by the betraying instrument. Each one of those seventeen had entered the hall with a stark ignorance of the piano; each one would leave with a newfound enlightenment. For this was not a young man playing a piano, as they had all expected. This was nothing but raw energy, nothing but a prehistoric grace and being flooding their ears and dribbling down their spines leaving thrilling goosebumps in their wake; nothing but someone else's mind, soul and heart spilling into them, overflowing with sorrow and joy and anger and freedom; nothing but the music of the heavens. For, each one reasoned in their own way, this must be the piano they play in heaven, if such a thing exists; and this must be the player. No sound had ever tasted so sweet, no music so bitter. The earth was spinning the wrong way on its axis, gravity had taken hold of the wrong core - the predator had caught his prey, and the sweet, sweet encouragement each key presented them with wound in the bait just a little closer. Each could feel the pounding of their hearts align to the angelic player's, and each could feel the vibrations of the low octaves in their veins, seeping through each uncovered inch of skin and stealing every thought, every sense and every cell of themselves until all that was left was the piano and the pitch black room.

Even through the infinite layers and beatings of the music, a steady _click, click_ could be heard, a rhythmic undertone to the higher register; for apparently, even through gloves, the sound of metal clashing against ivory was audible, and it was this that truly set the playing apart from the universal standard; never was there mentioned, in all music books and lists of genius musicians, such a player, who could play for God and impress him, whose arm was not of nature. Never had such a natural, heart-breaking sound been created by such a cold limb; or perhaps, they mused in their entranced state, it was the very fact that the player was part machine - unnatural, artificial machine - that steadily drew a knife across their hearts, teasing it and poking it, though never enough to kill, having mercy at the last moment and drawing away.

Each one of those seventeen soldiers left that pitch black room with a contradicted heart; so warm, yet so unfathomably sad. Each smile they gave in greeting that day, each casual chuckle in the throat earned a concerned, yet somewhat awed face in return; and each thin paper sheet, sold slightly crumpled and ink slightly smudged at the market the next day told the same story as the seventeen soldiers had told - though it was mocking of his real skill, talent and emotion; the bold capitals 'FULLMETAL PIANO' said nothing of the tears trickling down one soldier's face as he relayed the piece to the editor; the plain, black 'The Fullmetal Alchemist: A Genius Musician?' scratched under it was empty of the energy and vibrant colour the piano had portrayed that night, scrawling out a thousand languages in a million fonts and colours so abstract one could not register them with the human eye. Each soldier knew so, but dared not challenge it. The Fullmetal Alchemist had not been done justice, but then again, each thought, music could never be described so accurately in words. And just for a minute, each of those seventeen wished for a newspaper with the power of sound; a newspaper that told its stories through the ear rather than the eye. For just as it is impossible to describe a prodigious work of literature with taste, it is impossible to describe a prodigious player of the piano with sight.

For he truly was a prodigy, and secretly hailed as one by those fortunate seventeen.

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><p>Edward Elric's playing that night was the sole reason Roy Mustang took up the piano. He loathed being outdone in anything; be it alchemy, ladykilling <em>or<em>, much to his colleagues' surprise, music.

And though he practiced under a tutor for the next twenty-six years and became rather well-known throughout the southern half of Central City, he was never _quite_ as good as his fiery subordinate.

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><p><strong>Just a quickie - 800 words or so. How was it~? :3<strong>

**A little Ed-luffing. Sorry to all the Roy fans out there XD;;**

**(I've just realised my language got very formal during that... O_O)**


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